Sri Lanka’s Development as a Tourist Attraction Site Report

Introduction

Sustainably developed tourism has become one of the primary concerns of each country as more people are willing to go to places with better ecology, infrastructure and attractions. Generally, the tourism industry demands that all the spheres of human activities interact in order to attract new visitors to the area. One of such destinations is Sri Lanka, which is a beautiful tropical island in the Indian Ocean and has been quite a popular destination for tourists from all over the world due to its breath-taking location and uniqueness. It has an enormous amount of culture and heritage-based resources. Moreover, the state is enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The country is rich in natural and cultural resources. It took Sri Lanka 18 years to recognise a need for developing tourism as a driver of its economy. However, recent statistics show that more people prefer other countries for recreation. The purpose of this group project is to investigate the economic factors that can influence the development of Sri Lanka as a tourist attraction site.

Key Stages of Development

The direction of sustainable tourism has become the goal of each tourism-oriented country. The following are the features of tourism sustainability:

1. Optimal usage of environmental resources, biodiversity is preserved and ecosystems function together.
2. Socio-cultural authenticity is respected, cultural heritage is conserved and well treated and cross-cultural borders are honoured.
3. Economic benefits are equally distributed between all the stakeholders, the level of employment is stable, and opportunities for income growth are available.
4. Poverty and social alienation are eliminated from society (Rasoolimanesh and Jaafar, 2016).

To plan the stages of tourism development, it would be logical to stick to Gantt’s chart, which will help to establish the objectives and deadlines.

1. Any project has as a first step setting objectives, both short and long-term. The main aim of this program is to promote sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka. Achieving these objectives demands understanding the context of the country, that is, its location, economic, ecological and social factors influencing the state (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018). Sri Lanka can focus on preserving heritage sites to develop new and sustain existing tourism. One of the UNESCO heritage sites in Sri Lanka is the Sacred City of Kandy, which maintains a tooth of a Buddha. This site must be highly protected to preserve its sacredness to be visited by tourists.
2. The next step is to identify the stakeholders and develop working relations with them. Among the stakeholders can be indigenous people, visitors, different communities, cultural heritage agencies and other groups. Developing partnerships with trustworthy agents can have a positive impact on travellers who came to the island. Sri Lanka is inhabited by the indigenous tribe Vedda who is the earliest citizen of the island. This tribe may have a vested interest in developing tourism sustainability as they may contribute their uniqueness to it. Moreover, heritage agencies will assist Sri Lanka to establish itself as a centre of ancient but well-preserved sights.
3. The appraisal of tourist demand and supply is another stage. Any tourism starts with attractions and people choose countries to travel to due to the popularity of sights it has. An attraction represents an object, person, or place, that attracts people geographically or through remote electronic means so that they can experience it. Therefore, it will be necessary to single out the most popular attractions and create potentially successful and unique ones that will shape Sri Lanka’s image. This step would take several years as erecting new sites is time and finance-consuming.
4. At the stage of assessing, it is crucial to identify issues and perspectives that might affect the future of tourism. For example, the indigenous group of stakeholders might demand more time to train as tourist guides (Amerta, Sara and Bagiada, 2018). Moreover, they may ask for more investment in community maintenance. This step also includes financial planning, which will assess the gains and losses from cooperation with stakeholders.
5. The stage of analysis will measure the SWOT indicators. The study will assess whether Sri Lanka has popular tourist destinations, consider the opportunities available for their promotion, evaluate the factors affecting the difficulty of tourist management, and identify threats to the heritage values. Furthermore, the stage implies measuring the level of urgency and the importance of things to be done.
6. Further steps of development will include creating a logical plan of action, considering factors that may influence achieving goals. The last stage is to approve a program, principles, guidelines to complete the set objectives and make sure all the key points are in the plan. The entire plan will take several years as every element should be measured carefully.

Gantt Chart

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a tool which can be effective in measuring internal and external factors that affect and support the decision-making process.

Strengths

1. Country’s climate and weather;
2. Rich natural resources;
3. Tourism economic potential;
4. External investment attraction;
5. Tourism can bring vitality to the region’s economy.

Weaknesses

1. Insufficient tourism management;
2. Slow economy;
3. Lack of amenities for tourists;
4. Surrounding countries with better touristic potential;
5. Lack of advertisements.

Opportunities

1. Developing tourism facilities as a part of sustainable development;
2. Creating jobs for locals;
3. Cultural exchange;
4. Preserving heritage sites and natural resources as a strategy for developing ecotourism.

Threats

1. Damaging naturals resources due to the emergence of new infrastructure;
2. Tourism customer fatigue;
3. Little foreign investment;
4. Building new tourism system may impact social structure of the locals.

PEST Analysis

Political Factors

The political environment may affect tourism in many ways: terrorism, wars, or armed conflicts. Sri Lankan government actively participates in building new constructions such as roads, bridges. Moreover, Sri Lanka should establish relationships with some foreign countries that can influence the tourism industry.

Economic Factors

Sri Lankan economy does not work effectively now as it suffers from unemployment, high taxes and high level of interest rates. These factors affect the sector of tourism.

Socio-Cultural Factors

Tourists love to visit Sri Lanka because of its authentic values, food, traditions. The strategy of offering traditional food at the hotels and restaurants may significantly attract tourists to the area. Sri Lankan art is another attraction that depicts the religious beliefs of the locals.

Technological Factors

These factors are crucial in popularizing tourists in any country. Globalization highly influences all spheres of life. Therefore, in order to improve the sector of tourism, Sri Lanka must install technologies that will allow reaching the customer without using foreign media.

An Innovative Tourism and Hospitality Project

To develop the touristic sector, Sri Lanka should initiate a hospitality program that will presuppose offering hospitality services. These services may include offering local lodging, recreation activities, promoting countries’ arts and culture. As it was mentioned, Shi Lanka owns valuable lands preserved in UNESCO. Therefore, as a part of environmental development, the island needs to maintain as many wild animals, plants, parks and wilderness in general as to establish sustainable tourism (Amerta, Sara and Bagiada, 2018). Typically, people who explore hot countries tend to choose remote areas to relax to enclose with nature and its resources. Therefore, Sri Lanka’s goal is to focus on maintaining its heritage sites and wildlife to attract tourists.

For instance, Sri Lanka owns 22 national parks, most of which are the most impressive in Asia. Thus, the state’s goal is to ensure these national parks are preserved and nurtured to provide picturesque adventures for tourists. Moreover, these parks must be ecologically maintained, which means that the government must ensure there is no negative impact on the environment, such as smoking, littering and other activities that may harm (Rasoolimanesh and Jaafar, 2016). Another crucial point concerning the ecological side of sustainable tourism is to ensure Sri Lanka’s resources are limited to the customer’s use. It meant that there should be ecological limits that everyone should be aware of to preserve the island’s nature. Natural resources promote visitor experiences that include close contact with wildlife and an undeveloped natural environment. As a result, keeping wild Sri Lanka’s nature will attract many tourists as they will be curious to explore such sites.

Socio-cultural development can be established as well. The socio-cultural factors affected by tourist activities are the most complicated ones to measure and quantify. This factor differs from environmental and economic due to its subjectivity. However, tourism can potentially promote social development by creating working places, income redistribution and poverty elimination. Travelling is also an educational activity as it brings visitors and locals together. Hosts and travelers exchange cultures, traditions, languages and other values. Moreover, cultural understanding is a cornerstone of sustainable tourism. In addition to this, the socio-cultural components also include conservation and transmission of cultural and historical peculiarities of a country. Therefore, Sri Lanka needs to promote its traditions, especially the cultures of the indigenous peoples such as Veddas or Sinhalese. Such promotion will result in the propagation of local heritage, arts, music and other values.

One of the ways to make Sri Lanka the world’s leading attraction is to initiate innovations in tourism. Innovative tourism has become a trendy direction which develops countries so that they are visited year after year. One of the most significant improvements that may put Sri Lanka to the list of the most visited places concerns the technical part (Mihalic, 2016). Among the most successful innovations is the creation of online rental platforms where people can rent apartments, hotels, or condos that would suit their wants. Furthermore, such apps would help to develop more or less stable price orientation and it would be easy to read and receive feedback. Interactivity on such platforms is a key to tourism development as it allows both sides to participate in discussions concerning recreational activities (Boley, McGehee and Hammet, 2017) Therefore, there will be an opportunity of having everything at your fingertips without thinking about time, space and more payment alternatives. Moreover, the projects aimed to develop hospitality can be created to sustain Shi Lanka’s tourism.

Furthermore, the Sri Lankan websites can be optimized for mobile use. Mobile phones are the necessities now, so each tourist is likely to find or book a place where they want to stay or eat out; thus, the tourists will navigate around the hotel or restaurant websites faster (Budeanu et al., 2016). In general, Sri Lanka must promote itself through social media so that the people will be fascinated by the views and experiences.

In conclusion, it is relevant to state that achieving sustainable development of tourism aims to meet people’s needs while preserving nature. By creating a sustainable system of tourism, Sri Lanka will benefit, as people would want to visit its heritage site due to its uniqueness. For the most part, tourism will develop in an ecological direction and will attract people from all over the world. Moreover, by strengthening the economic and socio-cultural components, local people will be employed and their cultural values will be shared.

References

1. Amerta, I. M., Sara, I. M. and Bagiada, K. (2018) ‘Sustainable tourism development’, International Research Journal of Management, IT and Social Sciences, 5(2), pp. 248-254.
2. Boley, B., McGehee, N. and Hammet, A. (2017) ‘Importance-performance analysis (IPA) of sustainable tourism initiatives: the resident perspective’, Time Management, 58, pp. 66-77.
3. Budeanu, A., et al. (2016) ‘Sustainable tourism, progress, challenges and opportunities: an introduction’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 111, pp. 285–294.
4. Higgins-Desbiolles, F. (2018). ‘Sustainable tourism: sustaining tourism or something more?’, Tourism Management Perspectives, 25, pp. 157–160.
5. Mihalic, T. (2016) ‘Sustainable-responsible tourism discourse – Towards ‘responsustable’ tourism’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 111, pp. 451-470.
6. Rasoolimanesh, S. M. and Jaafar, M. (2016) ‘Sustainable tourism development and residents’ perceptions in World Heritage Site destinations’, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 22(1), pp. 34–48.